Wednesday, August 26, 2009

WELL-ADJUSTED

Reading this story of Eric’s, in which he talks about receiving the “mumbo jumbo voodoo crap” ministrations of his chiropractor, made me chuckle... because said ministrations are all too well known to certain denizens of Chez Elisson.

At first it was the Mistress of Sarcasm, who began a chiropractic treatment plan while she was residing in the suburbs of Nashville. Upon moving here to Atlanta, she found a new Chiro-Practitioner, one with whom she is eminently satisfied. And now the Missus is in the midst of her own treatment plan.

I suppose it is only a matter of time before I, too, become Well-Adjusted.

Chiropractic is a bizarre little corner of the medical world, inhabiting a twilight zone between scientific medicine and alternative healing. The spinal column, along with its associated musculature and nerves, is viewed as the fundamental key to good health, with most ailments somehow traceable to spinal misalignment, chronic degenerative conditions, or related issues. You’ll hear mysterious terms like “vertebral subluxation complex” nowhere else but at a chiropractor. There’s a goodly amount of mind-over-matter involved as well: D. D. Palmer, the founder of chiropractic, regarded the discipline as partially religious in nature.

Now, as for me, I’m somewhat of a skeptic. I’m not entirely convinced that a spine-poppin’ backrub is going to cure my erysipelas, catarrh, chilblains, diabeetus, or scrofula, much less any basal-cell carcinomas I may (Gawd forbid) happen to develop... but it’s hard to argue with results, which in the case of both the Missus and the Mistress have been positive. And even the Missus’s Ob-Gyn has given chiropractic his seal of approval, so who am I to be a Doubting Thomas?